Tokyo Electric Power Co. in 2008 recognized the “indispensable” need for countermeasures against a towering tsunami at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, but it ended up doing nothing, an internal document showed: here.

KARIWA, Niigata Prefecture–The father of pro-nuclear Kariwa Mayor Hiroo Shinada is a director of a company that received contracts worth millions of yen for work at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co: here.

Four years after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated parts of northern Japan, the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is still decades from being decommissioned and environmental problems continue to mount. As the anniversary passed last week, the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was planning to reopen the nation’s nuclear plants despite widespread public opposition and ongoing safety concerns.

Japan’s 48 nuclear plants have been offline since September 2013. The plants were shut down following the partial meltdowns at the Fukushima plant. Reactors 3 and 4 at Kansai Electric Power Company’s Ōi plant in Fukui Prefecture, were restarted in July 2012, before being closed again the following year.

Opinion polls have consistently shown that the majority of people do not want the plants to be reactivated. Prime Minister Abe, however, is pushing ahead, under pressure from the electric companies. “We cannot go zero-nuclear based on the opinion polls alone,” Abe told parliament in February. Before the disaster, Japan relied on nuclear energy for 30 percent of its power needs.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) president Naomi Hirose stated in February that the restart of its Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant was crucial to maintaining profits. “Even as Kashiwazaki Kariwa remains offline, we posted a profit last year and can probably do so again this year,” Hirose said. “I wouldn’t say there won’t be the third time, but we cannot expect it can last forever.” The plant is located 220 kilometers northwest of Tokyo. TEPCO is the owner of the crippled Fukushima plant.

Four years after the disaster, radiation leaks from the Fukushima plant have not been stopped. TEPCO confirmed last month that radioactive material was still seeping into the ocean. The company was aware of the problem last May, but delayed reporting it. Rainwater, which had pooled on a roof of the plant, was contaminated before leaking into the ocean through a gutter. The water contained radiation levels 10 times higher than water from other sections of the plant’s roof.

Earlier this month, TEPCO admitted that 750 tons of contaminated water had overflowed from storage areas containing tanks. Large quantities of water have to be continuously injected into the reactors because their cooling systems were badly damaged during the disaster. As it repeatedly did prior to the catastrophe, the company is continuing to put its profits ahead of public health and safety.

The disaster occurred on March 11, 2011 when the Tōhoku earthquake, which registered a magnitude of 9.0, struck off the Pacific coast of central Japan, creating a 15-meter tsunami. The massive wave crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi plant, sweeping over an inadequate seawall and knocking out all power and emergency generators.

The cores of three of the plant’s six reactors quickly overheated as cooling systems shut down. Rapid action by workers in finding ways to inject water into the reactors prevented a catastrophic total meltdown. However, hydrogen gas explosions damaged the reactor buildings and substantial amounts of radiation escaped into the environment, including from a damaged fuel rod storage tank atop a fourth reactor.

Despite the scale of the disaster, the Abe government is pressing ahead with restarting nuclear plants with only nominal changes to the regulatory regime and safety standards. Two reactors at the Sendai nuclear plant are due to reopen this year, possibly in June. The plant, located in the southern Kagoshima Prefecture, is operated by Kyushu Electric Power Company. It received approval to resume operations last November following a vote by the prefecture’s assembly.

For residents in the region around the Fukushima plant, the nightmare is continuing. In 2011, people were often evacuated in a haphazard manner, with the affected zones expanding several times in one day. In some cases, residents were unaware that they were moved into high radiation areas. According to the Japanese government, 230,000 people are still displaced and of those 80,000 are living in temporary housing.

Cancer rates are expected to rise considerably for those exposed to the radiation. The World Health Organization stated in 2013 that among people exposed to radiation as infants there is a 7 percent higher risk of males and 6 percent higher risk of females of developing leukemia and breast cancer respectively.

Children are also highly susceptible to developing thyroid cancer. Checkups are being conducted on the 367,707 people under the age of 18 living in the Fukushima Prefecture when the meltdowns occurred at the power plant. Children born afterward have also been tested. More than 100 confirmed or suspected cases of thyroid cancer have been reported. Typically, only about 1 to 9 cases of cancer are expected among 1 million children.

Some doctors have questioned these findings, saying that thyroid cancer often presents no symptoms and that the increased numbers are due to increased testing. Undoubtedly, the government and TEPCO will seize on these comments to deny responsibility for the health effects caused by the Fukushima disaster.

Megumi Muto, a mother of two children exposed to radiation, expressed the concerns and anger many parents are feeling. “They had rashes on their bodies then nose bleeds. My son’s white cells have decreased and they both have incredible fatigue,” Muto said. “They may not have cancer now but they both have multiple nodules around their thyroids. I’m really worried.”

No-one has been held accountable for the negligence and lack of safety measures at the plant before the earthquake and tsunami struck. Reactivating nuclear plants without adequate safety measures in one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world is only setting the stage for future disasters.

An investigative journalist who went undercover at Fukushima, filming with a camera hidden in his watch, says that many of the workers were brought into the nuclear plant by Japan’s organized crime syndicate. Because the Japanese government has been reluctant to invite multinational workers into the country, its nuclear industry mostly uses cheap domestic labor.

These so-called “nuclear gypsies” are homeless men from the Sanya neighborhood of Tokyo and Kamagasaki. “Working conditions in the nuclear industry have always been bad,” the deputy director of Osaka’s Hannan Chuo Hospital, Saburo Murata, told Reuters. “Problems with money, outsourced recruitment, lack of proper health insurance — these have existed for decades.” The problem is that after Japan’s parliament approved a bill to fund decontamination work in August 2011, the law did not apply existing rules regulating the profitable construction industry.

Therefore, contractors engaged in decontamination, were not required to share information on their management, so anyone could instantly become a nuclear contractor.

The police said the boy, who is from Kitanagoya, Aichi Prefecture, was sent to Fukushima to cut contaminated leaves and scrape up dirt in the disaster zone last July.

Japan’s labor law prohibits people under 18 from working in radioactive areas.

Police arrested Yuji Chiba, 49, who is in charge of the company’s labor management and is responsible for the cleanup operations.

The boy started to work at the company in April after graduating from junior high school. He began to clean up the radioactive waste in July, but escaped from the job after working for about five days. He was ordered to lie about his age.

The boy said his former employer had lowered his wages to just ¥3,000 a day and hit him when he did not work hard enough.

Workers cleaning up villages in Fukushima are supposed to receive a special hazard allowance equivalent to about ¥9,000 a day from the government, in addition to their wages.

The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami badly damaged the Fukushima No. 1 plant, sparked a triple nuclear meltdown, forced more than 160,000 residents to flee nearby towns and contaminated water, food and air.

Thousands of workers have been clearing radioactive waste from towns closest to the plant over the past four years.

Japan’s traditional subcontracting structure in the construction industry opened up lucrative cleanup contracts in Fukushima to multiple layers of smaller companies that regularly skim workers’ pay.

Fishermen in Fukushima Prefecture slammed Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Wednesday after it emerged that water containing cesium and other radioactive isotopes has been draining into the Pacific near the Fukushima No. 1 plant and that Tepco did nothing to prevent it despite learning of the leak last May: here.

The workers are doing plumbing work on tanks that store radioactive water at the plant.

They say their wages are too low considering the risk of radiation exposure they face. The workers are demanding TEPCO pay each of them about 96-thousand dollars in compensation.

They say their wages haven’t changed even after TEPCO announced an increase in labor payments to subcontractors by around 96 dollars last November.

One of the plaintiffs in his 30s said he is worried about his health because his monthly radiation exposure levels sometimes exceed 4 millisieverts.

He said though he had been reluctant to voice his concerns over fear of losing his job, the lawsuit will make it easier for workers to speak up.

Tsuguo Hirota, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said TEPCO is responsible for making sure the subcontractors properly remunerate workers. He said he wants to bring the working conditions at the Daiichi plant into the open through the trial.

While TEPCO faces the challenge of securing three to six thousand workers everyday for the decommissioning of the plant, its treatment of workers will be dealt with in court for the first time.

FUKUSHIMA, Aug 26 — A Japanese court has ruled that Fukushima nuclear operator Tokyo Electric was responsible for a woman’s suicide after the March 2011 disaster and must pay compensation, in a landmark ruling that could set a precedent for other claims against the utility.

The civil suit by Mikio Watanabe claimed that Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc (Tepco) was to blame for the July 2011 death of his wife, Hamako, 58, who doused herself in kerosene and set herself on fire after falling into depression.

The district court in Fukushima ruled in favour of Watanabe, a court official told reporters. Kyodo news reported that Tepco was ordered to pay ¥49 million (RM1.5 million) in compensation. Watanabe had sought about ¥91 million in damages.

The court decision is the latest blow for the utility, which was bailed out with taxpayer funds in 2012 and expects to spend more than US$48 billion in compensation alone for the nuclear disaster.

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Tepco has settled a number of suicide-related claims through a government dispute resolution system, but has declined to say how many or give details on how much it has paid.

Watanabe, who had declined to settle out of court, told Reuters after the verdict: “I am satisfied with the decision.” He said he believed his wife was satisfied, too.

Toru Takeda, 73, a retired high school teacher from a nearby town, travelled from his temporary home in Yamagata in north Japan to hear the verdict. Takeda has filed a lawsuit against Tepco over his inability to return to his home.

“Our verdict will come next month from the same court, so, of course, we welcome this outcome,” he told Reuters.

Tepco’s shares and debt, which have been battered in the wake of the Fukushima crisis and prolonged cleanup, have held largely steady in recent weeks and showed little reaction to the verdict. Tepco shares were down 0.5 percent at 383 yen in afternoon trade in Tokyo.

The 11-member Tokyo No. 5 Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution voted that Tsunehisa Katsumata, chairman of Tepco at the time of the disaster, and two former vice presidents, Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro, should be indicted.

The panel said the former executives had failed to take sufficient crisis management steps to ensure safety despite the possibility that a massive tsunami could trigger an unprecedented accident.

A group of Fukushima residents and others had filed criminal complaints against the Tepco executives for alleged professional negligence resulting in death and injury in connection with the nuclear plant disaster.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office decided last September not to indict former leaders of the Fukushima plant operator, saying it was difficult to foresee the scale of the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 that triggered the worst nuclear crisis since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

With the latest decision, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office is expected to resume investigations into the three former officials. If it decides not to indict them or does not announce a decision within three months, the prosecution inquest panel will discuss the case once again.

Katsumata and the two others will face mandatory indictment should the panel decide again that they merit indictment.

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The group argued the executives continued the operation of the Fukushima plant without implementing necessary safety measures, forcing many residents to be exposed to radiation and causing the deaths of patients and the elderly under severe conditions following the nuclear crisis. Of the other three, the panel said Akio Komori, former managing director, merits reinvestigation, while it decided Norio Tsuzumi and Toshiaki Enomoto, both former vice presidents, do not merit indictment.

“I am so happy and can’t put it into words. I think the members of the Tokyo prosecution inquest panel judged the case sincerely as consumers of electricity produced by Tepco,” said Ayako Oga, 41, an evacuee from Fukushima.

Stigma, pay cuts and risk of radiation exposure are among the reasons why 3,000 employees have left Tepco, the utility at the center of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Now there’s an additional factor: better paying jobs in the feel-good solar energy industry.

Engineers and other employees at Tokyo Electric Power Co. were once typical of the nation’s corporate culture that is famous for prizing loyalty to a single company and lifetime employment with it. But the March 2011 tsunami that swamped the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, sending three reactors into meltdown, changed that.

Tepco was widely criticized for being inadequately prepared for tsunami despite Japan’s long history of being hit by giant waves and for its confused response to the disaster. The public turned hostile toward the nuclear industry and Tepco, or “Tohden” in Japanese, became a dirty word.

Only 134 people quit Tepco the year before the disaster. The departures ballooned to 465 in 2011, another 712 in 2012 and 488 last year. Seventy percent of those leaving were younger than 40. When the company offered voluntary retirement for the first time earlier this year, some 1,151 workers applied for the 1,000 available redundancy packages.

The exodus, which has reduced staff to about 35,700 people, adds to the challenges of the ongoing work at Fukushima to keep the meltdowns under control, remove the fuel cores and safely decommission the reactors, which is expected to take decades.

The factors pushing workers out have piled up. The financial strain of the disaster has led to brutal salary cuts while ongoing problems at Fukushima No. 1, such as substantial leaks of irradiated water, have reinforced the image of a bumbling and irresponsible organization.

“No one is going to want to work there, if they can help it,” said Akihiro Yoshikawa, who quit Tepco in 2012.

After leaving he started a campaign called “Appreciate Fukushima Workers,” trying to counter what he calls the “giant social stigma” attached to working at Fukushima No. 1.

Many of the workers, as residents of the area, also lost their homes to no-go zones, adding to personal hardships.

The Fukushima stigma is such that some employees hide the fact they work at the plant. They even worry they will be turned away at restaurants or that their children will be bullied at school after a government report documented dozens of cases of discrimination.

While Tepco is out of favor with the public, the skills and experience of its employees that span the gamut of engineers, project managers, maintenance workers and construction and financial professionals, are not.

Energy industry experience is in particular demand as the development of solar and other green energy businesses is pushed along by generous government subsidies.

Currently the government pays solar plants ¥32 per kilowatt hour of energy. The so-called tariff for solar power varies by states and cities in the U.S., but they are generally lower than Japan’s version. The rate in Germany is about half that in Japan.

Sean Travers, Japan president of EarthStream, a London-based recruitment company that specializes in energy jobs, has been scrambling to woo Tepco employees as foreign companies do more clean energy business in Japan.

“Tepco employees are very well trained and have excellent knowledge of how the Japanese energy sector works, making them very attractive,” he said.

Two top executives at U.S. solar companies doing business in Japan, First Solar director Karl Brutsaert and SunPower Japan director Takashi Sugihara, said they have interviewed former Tepco employees for possible posts.

Besides their experience, knowledge of how the utility industry works and their contacts, with both private industry and government bureaucracy, are prized assets.

“It’s about the human network and the Tepco employees have all the contacts,” said Travers, who says he has recruited about 20 people from the utility and is hoping to get more.

Since September 2012, all Tepco managers have had their salaries slashed by 30 percent, while workers in nonmanagement positions had their pay reduced 20 percent.

But last year, Tepco doled out ¥100,000 bonuses to 5,000 managers as an incentive to stay on.